


You'd Be My Nicotine (In Another World)

by angelgazing



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 09:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duncan wants, really. That's what it's all about. Pre-series, pre-Lilly's death Duncan/Logan</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'd Be My Nicotine (In Another World)

He wakes up with a start, Logan above him, propped on his elbow and laughing. His throat is dry, and his eyes are heavy with drunkenness and maybe dreaming, and he knows there's something to be said here, but words are stuck, dried out in the desert that is his throat.

"Sleepy?" Logan asks, his mouth quirked upwards in a clear indication of what he thinks of _that_. His eyebrow is raised, questioning; his fingertips pressing against Duncan's arm with grains of sand still attached. Pressing just above his elbow, just inside his elbow, sliding down to hold against the rapid, scared beating of his pulse. The thin skin just above, just _there_, where it's scarily soft and weak with blood and small bones, where it goes all the way through to places it _shouldn't_. "No more for you, I think," he says, and takes his hand away to grab again around the neck of a bottle, his mouth still red and bowed so that Duncan knows exactly what he's saying, even without the words.

_No one_, he thinks, _says as much as you_.

"And you became my mother when?" Duncan says instead, the words cracking just as the waves rush in and Veronica laughs like a shriek of something disgustingly close to the happiest they'll ever get. Way over _there_ somewhere that could be Mexico for all he can see lying like he is, so over _there_ which isn't _here_ and that's all that really matters, maybe.

All he knows is he'll never get the sand out of him, it'll be there 'til he dies now, digging into every part of skin it can with his shirtsleeves rolled up to elbows and his pant legs rolled up as far as they would to keep out of the wet of the ocean side sand where the water wears it smooth, where Veronica likes to run ahead of him, with her shoes in _his_ hand and Lilly by her side. He knows the sand will never come out, and Logan takes a drink of champagne straight from the bottle and makes it look as effortless as they do in the movies. Makes it look like it isn't a dangerous thing to attempt, because he leaves it to Duncan to choke on it that way, just for a laugh.

"When did you become such a pansy?" Logan asks, and it only seems like it's random. His throat is long when it's arched back, when he's milking every last drop that he can from the bottle. "Didn't you used to be able to handle your liquor, man?"

"Shut up," Duncan says, his elbow momentarily misplaced into the soft spot of Logan's belly, where he grunts and tries to hit back and then falls into the sand again. Slips until his elbow is in Duncan's ribs, and his wrist is an empty, white curve against Duncan's belly, which rumbles slightly, like purring. He tilts his head like he's thinking, like he's got something to _say_, like he's resting it there against Duncan's shoulder, so the sharp point of his chin digs sort of painfully in when Duncan inhales sharply because his nerves are doing something stupid and unexpected where Logan's pressed to him. Like screaming, maybe, or just singing really, really loudly with their metaphorical faces tipped back toward the sky.

Logan laughs, and it's bitter like a lot of things aren't, even when he thinks they should be. It brushes across the skin just under his open collar, where it feels raw-red from sand and Veronica's fingernails and the air that passes over it when Logan fucking _breathes_ like that, all sharp points like he wants it to hurt. Wants Duncan to _notice_, maybe, but he doubts it. He doubts it a lot when Logan laughs his words, barks them out so they all stand on their own. "Fucking. Make. Me."

And he thinks maybe this is dreaming, the stars like a blanket overhead, the ocean in the background, in the foreground. Waves and sand and a seashell digging into his left calf, Logan dry and not beside him, coldrough like driftwood under the back of his knuckles where they touch because they've got the ocean in front of them and miles of sand to left or right, but they're crowded close together, and it must be dreaming. It must be because Duncan doesn't know _why_.

And it's possible he's drunk to boot, because he can't remember his _name_ but he can remember a hundred air conditioned nights under the covers of his bed, rubbing greedily against the mattress trying to think, to _not_ think, of the way his fingers slip and stick into the dried-chlorine exhausted hallows between Logan's ribs. But he thinks of it every time he inhales, and smells chlorine on his sheets and feels his ribs expand beneath his palm where he's trying to hold them, hold all of it, hold everything in.

He tries to remember the ABC song, but the rhythm is off, thrown around by Logan breathing on his neck, his chest pressed up against Duncan's shoulder like a dare. "I could," he says, to the tune of what's supposed to be L-M-N-O-P but decidedly _isn't_. "You know, I really could." And it's true at least, like it's true that they'll be grounded for-fucking-ever when they get home, and that sand is never comfortable to lay on, really, and that driftwood is always going to be a stupid metaphor for something. He _knows_ it's true, because he's had this dream before, where Logan is an ass who says things just so they'll _sting_, and Duncan shuts him up by _leaning_ and _pressing_ and _touching_ and there's a lot of emphasis in that dream, because he always wakes up sticky except by that point he's forgotten what it is he's supposed to be doing.

Logan laughs, and pulls a cigarette out of absolutely nowhere, probably just because he likes the look of the things. Likes the way that his reflection in the pool house mirror looks when he's reclined with it between his lips, and Duncan knows him well enough to not doubt that he tried out the look first, just to see.

"When did—"

"Lilly," Logan says, and looks at Duncan from the corner of his eye because with Duncan's face turned toward him he can't turn without doing some touching that can't be written off as being of the heterosexual-best-friends-forever variety, "likes the whole bad boy thing, I think."

"That's more than I ever needed to know about my sister," Duncan mutters, what he hopes is very darkly, because now the image will never burn itself off the retina of his mind's eye: Logan in leather, a tattoo spilling down the sharp curve of his hipbone, his fingers curled around a cigarette, and jeans slung low. He's not sure that's really bad-boy, actually, but fuck if it doesn't work for him.

Logan leans up on his elbows again, to dig in the pocket of his dress pants only to come away with a triumphant grin and a lighter. "You passed out—"

"Dozed off," Duncan corrects idly, when Logan pauses and cups his hand around the cigarette to light it, drags in deep and then coughs. Which sort of throws that whole bad-boy thing way off.

"Passed out in the middle of the game," he finishes, like none of it even happened.

"Dozed off," Duncan says again, and tugs absently on Logan's wrist, brings the cigarette to his mouth still pinched between Logan's thumb and forefinger, the paper is thin and wet-sticky. It's cheap and Logan could do better, so he doesn't know what that's all about. The smoke rattles in his chest like a half-empty box of leftover candy hearts. (The green one said "Be Mine" when Veronica shook it out into his palm and he'd said yes, or something equally stupid, and he thinks, _I didn't mean that_, like it's an epiphany. He thinks, _That was a lie_, because he'd followed the thin line of Logan's mouth with his eyes as he'd said it.)

Veronica's down at the shoreline with Lilly, sitting on the wet sand in her pretty-white dress, on Logan's jacket, maybe, with her head in Lilly's lap. And Lilly's laughing, he can hear her, and probably he just made the first part up, but he doesn't feel like looking for himself.

"Is she beautiful?" he asks, because stupid questions always come to him when he's hammered and there's a pulse running too fast in the pad of his thumb where it's pressed to Logan's wrist but he doesn't know whose it is. Which actually happens kind of a lot, now that he thinks about it.

"Absolutely," Logan whispers, and there's something in his eye that's bordering on evil, when he glances down at Duncan. "I'd do her."

Duncan lets his hand drop away, onto his stomach where he's got the urge to do something stupid. He sighs, and it's as heavy as his limbs feel now, as heavy as his eyes feel, when he's had too much to drink and there's stale smoke in the back of his throat and the faint irritation of dried champagne across his cheek. "I don't know whether to hope if you're talking about my sister or not. This is disturbing."

Logan's tongue peeks out, to wet his bottom lip, the cigarette held up like an offering, but all Duncan can see is the dark of his mouth against the pale of his skin. And he's had some fairly stupid thoughts in his lifetime, maybe more than the average boy his age, but the ones he's having now might take the cake, because Logan says, "So, have you ever…"

And Duncan says, "Kissed another guy."

_This_, he thinks, in the moment of panic afterwards, _is why I hate drinking games_.

"No," Logan answers quickly, his mouth quirking upwards at the corners, around his half-a-cigarette.

"Ever wanted to?" Duncan asks, mostly just because he's this far in.

Logan laughs, harshly, like he thinks _that_ should be answer enough, his knee knocking into Duncan's as he shifts or whatever, turns toward Duncan to get a better look. His eyes are wider than usual, but not wide, and Duncan feels the shift of sand just almost under him when Logan gathers a fist of it. "No," he says, the word drawn out, very, very slowly, in the way that isn't mocking so much as lying through his teeth. "Wanna stop being so queer here, pal?" he asks as an afterthought, the knuckles of his fistful of hand pressing against Duncan's hip where his shirt has ridden up. It sort of, kind of, makes Duncan want to say something really clever about fucking him through the glass floor of his own house, but he can't really think of a way in which that would end well.

He's not sure he cares, but at least he knows that he should.

"Shut up," he says instead, bringing his barefoot up to kick absently against Logan's ankle, which is sharp and pointy and not a place to kick very hard without some sort of protective footwear. For the record. "It was your game."

"It was Lilly's game."

"You're always playing Lilly's game, but I'm the pussy?"

"Pretty much," Logan says, and shrugs, snuffs out the cigarette when it's mostly filter and paper and ash. He drops back down again, like he's looking at the stars, his shoulder pressed tight against Duncan's so there's no room between them. "Special talent, you know?"

Duncan snorts, and closes his eyes, feels Logan _breathe_, like that, right there, pressing up into him when his chest expands. His knuckles are still sharp points along Duncan's hip, so neither of them can shift, really, holed up into the curve of the earth that someone else has made around them. The sand is higher, cradling them there, and he thinks, _This is so unfair_. And he thinks, _What if this is the best part of our lives_?


End file.
